Chapter 18
Eighteen
JESSE
I knew before I was even fully awake that I was alone.
As I rolled over and my hands ran across the sheets on the other side of the bed, I discovered that Clara had been gone for a while. The sheets were cold.
Before I could get too lost in wondering where she was, my eyes snagged on the bikini she had thrown onto the radiator last night. It looked almost mundane as it hung there, but my memory could recall what it had looked like on her. Without being aware of it, my hand was gripping my erection over my shorts. I squeezed it hard as my eyes slipped back shut and conjured up images of Clara lazing by the pool.
Despite everything telling me to go ahead, I let go of my dick and got out of bed. I could not have a wank while thinking about Clara. As I was milling around picking my clothes for the day, there was a knock on the door. I didn’t get a chance to respond before Rachel burst through the door.
“Clo, you got a pair of shorts I can bor—” Rachel was far enough into the room that she could see that I was the only one there. “You’re not Clara.”
“I am not.”
“Do you know where she is?” she asked.
“I don’t. I woke up, and she wasn’t here. Your guess is as good as mine.”
Rachel dropped down next to Clara’s suitcase and started picking through her clothes.
“Probably for the best for you, though,” she said.
“Huh?”
Rachel looked up at me and then flicked her eyes down to the still-visible erection in my shorts. She had blown into the room so quickly that I forgot it was even there, and it was too late to pretend that it wasn’t now. My hand still moved in a half-hearted attempt to block it from Rachel’s view.
“Oh, yeah. I guess.” I shrugged.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything about it. I’m not completely awake, and my ability to filter hasn’t woken up yet,” Rachel said as she pulled out a pair of black denim shorts and eyed them up.
I laughed. “It’s fine. Turns out it just needed to be shamed into submission.” I moved my hand away and crossed my arms across my chest.
“Well, I don’t want to be the one to make you feel shame about it.”
“You didn’t. The reason it’s there did.” I nodded at the shorts she had just triumphantly pulled from the suitcase. “Those shorts piss Clara off by the way.”
Rachel’s head snapped to me.
“How do you know that? And in what way do they piss her off?”
I felt the back of my neck heat up.
Good friends paid attention to their friends when they made comments about…anything. Even a pair of black denim shorts that looked a lot like three other pairs they owned and could only be identified by the star embedded on the button that did them up.
It didn’t mean anything that I knew almost immediately that they were the ones that irritated her.
It didn’t.
“They cut into her thighs. And I know that because I’ve heard her complain about them enough. She somehow manages to forget they’re a problem until she sits down for longer than two minutes.”
“She keeps them because they make her arse look good.” She paused before looking back at me. “Don’t they?” Rachel asked as she dropped them back in and carried on searching.
“Yeah, they do,” I answered before I could stop myself. Rachel looked at me again with a smile on her face.
“Is that why you’re feeling shame?”
I scoffed. “I don’t feel great about it. She’s a friend. Just a friend.”
Rachel laughed, a bright sound. “Just a friend who is single now.”
“And?”
“Jesse, people do not look at their friends the way that you look at Clara. I feel like the heat in your gaze for a lot of yesterday could have been used to warm up skyscrapers. Fuck, I gotta be honest, I don’t think that piece of shit man she called her boyfriend for far too long ever looked at her like that.
“That isn’t, however, what I think you need to know. That bikini”—she pointed to the radiator—“was nicknamed the ‘fuck me’ bikini and she has never worn it. She’s had it for three years. Yet, for whatever reason, it made it out of the drawer this time. Then it made it into the suitcase and at the first opportunity, she wore it. On the one day that Drew isn’t here.”
“That probably had nothing to do with me,” I said.
“Take it from someone who knows that girl better than I know myself. She wore it on the one day that it couldn’t be misconstrued as her trying to get her ex-boyfriend’s attention. It was all for you. Maybe it was a subconscious reward to you for being a calming enough influence on the flight that she didn’t have a full-on panic attack.”
I frowned. I knew she was nervous, but not that nervous. “She has panic attacks?”
“Yeah. Thanks for flying out with her, by the way. She refused to let any of us change our flight to fly with her once Drew changed his,” she said. There was no hiding the anger in her voice.
“He changed his flight knowing his long-term girlfriend doesn’t like flying?” I spat.
“You aren’t alone in disliking him. I still have no idea what possessed her to even consider getting engaged to him.” Rachel held up a different pair of shorts, blue denim this time. I nodded. Clara had never complained about them. Rachel moved away from the suitcase. “I’m going to go get ready. I will be back here in fifteen minutes, and we can go down and deal with everyone together.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
Rachel walked over to me and placed a hand on my arm. “Jesse, I have known most of these people the majority of my life, and I still hate walking into a room with more than two of them in it on my own. It doesn’t matter how welcome they make you feel when you’re there, walking in is one of the most stressful things I have ever and will ever experience. I do have to.”
“Thanks,” I said gratefully.
“Fifteen minutes,” she said as she walked out of the room.